A blog about games, the people who play them, and the madness that ensues

Thursday, 11 November 2010

A quick catch up on Pathfinder

October ended up being a total desert for me gaming wise, as any observer will be able to tell from this blog. What, with my birthday, my wife's birthday, and various other commitments, I was not able to make the Friday Pathfinder session for about a month. On the upside, work has picked up big time. I was able to get some PS2 gaming in here and there, focusing on Champions of Norrath and Baldur's Gate - Dark Alliance 2, both great games which capture some of the old school feel of D&D. However, now my son has been banned for using the Playstation for three weeks due to a sub-standard homework performance, so it looks like I'll be forced into a few solo outings on The Thing, a single player horror adventure game I picked up for a song, which is inspired by the film(s) of the same name.

I'm seriously thinking about moving my sport and trading musings into different blogs, and restricting The Great Game to my purely gaming-related musings, which is perhaps what it should be.

Looking at the traffic on this site, it seems to be the Pathfinder posts which are attracting the most attention. Unfortunately, several chapters of our Kingmaker campaign have charged past in October, and much has gone on in my absence, which unfortunately I cannot report in any great detail. Suffice to say there seems to have been an altercation with some lizardmen, and a hydra was duly tracked down and slain (a monster, rumours of which the DM had been tormenting us with for what seems like months now!) Still, the aquatic threat seems to have been safely purged, and we're back on solid ground.

I finally made it back to the group last Friday, to pick up where I left off with Artemisia, my human barbarian character, now at 6th level. Our kingdom seems to be shaping up nicely, although I'm not really doing much of the day-to-day kingdom administration, a task nobly undertaken by Manoj, our resident elven wizard, for whom the number crunching and spreadsheets required for the Pathfinder kingdom system hold much appeal.

The kingdom continues to coalesce into spheres of influence, with a sort of university town in the north run by our wizard, Grameer, and a druidic religious centre under Queen Cassie, our druid and head of state. The capital, and most easily defensible settlement, remains Staghelm, run by Artemisia and ably assisted by the tengu monk Wu Ya. Olban, our changeling rogue, has his own somewhat disreputable settlement, little more than a collection of gambling dens and brothels, to the west.

Last week's session kicked off with Olban waking up in bed next to the severed head of one of his madams. It turns out she, and one of his bodyguards, have been murdered by an old accomplice of his, another changeling, who we believe could be out to disrupt our benevolent reign as well as assassinate Olban into the bargain. This rogue, called Mad Eddie or One Eyed Eddie, could become a problem due to his ability to change his identity with ease, and strike against us when we least expect it. We were not able to make much progress in tracking him down, so in the interests of distracting ourselves, went troll hunting instead.

We continue to explore the southern regions of our realm, where I believe there could be a dragon lurking, and where there are still some tough monsters. In this case we have infiltrated a troll lair, once a dwarf stronghold, and have managed to finally get ourselves into a bit of a pickle. We started off fairly stealthily, and managed to kill three trolls before they woke up to our presence, but now we are in some tunnels beneath the dwarf watchtower and starting to lose hit points. Plus, I'm aware some of our spellcasters have already cast their best stuff.

We're also facing off against up to three more trolls, maybe more (I think we've killed five or six now), including a 'trettin', a troll/ettin hybrid, which is particularly nasty.

We had to leave the game mid-battle last week, as we were already down two players by 11.30pm, and some of us have small children who are no respecters of lie-ins on Saturday mornings!

Next time: more on the 1st level Pathfinder game we managed to get away at half term, plus thoughts on the upcoming BenCon.

1 comment:

The Thing, while very atmospheric, suffers from a massive logic flaw. I won't detail it, as it's something you may never encounter, but it completely ruined the game for me!

I'd recommend Final Fantasy XII, which is quite unlike the rest of the series in having a strong sandbox feel. As such, it may be my favourite of the series. I have it, but alas it's a US edition, so won't work on your console.